It is well understood that restaurateurs, bar tenders, and micro-breweries, wine venders, home brewers, and many consumers, store and preserve various types of fluids inside of a vessel under pressure, the vessel adapted for enabling releasable attachment to a coupler. Couplers can operate with pre-pressurized gas cartridges that are utilized to tap vessels containing a fluid. The fluid can be a liquid or a gas. The liquid can be a liquid beverage, a carbonated liquid beverage, or a non-carbonated liquid beverage. An example of a carbonated liquid beverage is beer that is dispensed externally from within the vessel by means of the gas pressure and a faucet.
When the fluid is a carbonated liquid it is well known that carbonated liquids lose carbonation when exposed to oxygen and other gases in the atmosphere. In systems including a liquid which is a carbonated beverage, once the carbonated beverage is opened by the user it begins to lose the necessary carbonation causing the flavor of the carbonated beverage to change, the fizziness to lessen, the head to deplete, such that the taste to the consumer may be described as flat or bitter, watered down, even when a standard cap is maintained or reinstalled on the liquid beverage vessel.
Nitrogenated beers are usually gassed with about 70% nitrogen (N2) and about 30% CO2, or 75% nitrogen (N2) and about 35% CO2 unlike fully carbonated beers which contain 100% CO2. The N2 is always put into the beer by the brewer before bottling or kegging. It is not a natural part of the fermentation process.
In systems including a liquid which is beer contained in the vessel, the beer will go flat over an extended time period and will go flat as a result of oxygenation of the CO2, or a CO2/N2 blend gas composition for nitro-beer, such that the resulting oxygen fills the head space above the beer in the vessel. In addition, the beer becomes more acidic which lowers the pH of the beer, because in carbonated beers the dissolved carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid in solution, which has a bitter taste. When dealing with a liquid beverage including wine, the problem is finding a gas composition including N2 gas composition to discharge into the vessel to re-pressurize and freshen the wine.
The problem is finding a means to purge the head space with a volume of a gas composition to displace the oxygen with CO2 when the cap is installed to maintain pressurization within the vessel containing the beer, and, accordingly, the freshness of the beer. The original seal on the vacuum cannot be reestablished once the seal is broken.
Pressurized containers for beverages are capable of maintaining internal pressure from compressed gas, for example from carbonation, or from nitrogenation, or a blend of carbon and nitrogen, and, still further from argon. However, the pressurized containers, for example, a vessel, include a limiting connecting means that is specific to a particular coupler. Closure mechanisms range from caps, twist off or pressed, to tabs which are integrally transportable or easily cleaned due to their large size and valve/dispensing system. Medium sized containers including a capacity of 32 ounces or 64 ounces of a beverage, for example, beer containers commonly known as growlers, are generally not capable of maintaining carbonation or pressurization over an extended time period and, consequentially, if the entire volume of beer is not consumed at one sitting the remainder of the beer will go flat and taste bitter due to the carbonic acid formation upon oxidation of the beer.
It is evident, there is a need for a system that implements a purge of CO2 or CO2/N2, or N2, within the vessel containing a carbonated liquid beverage to maintain the CO2, or CO2/N2, or N2, level of the liquid beverage by displacing the detrimental gas byproducts and thereby maintaining the carbonation of the liquid beverage to ensure the liquid beverage's freshness, flavor and a non-acidic pH utilizing a universal coupler.
It is known that when a growler containing beer is opened for the first time after it is initially filled, due to the oxidation process of the beer that occurs upon the beer's exposure to oxygen, the beer loses its freshness and typically goes flat within a few hours. Still further, upon filling the growler with beer the beer is oxygenated by the oxygen present in the interior of the growler and initiates the oxygenation process of the beer. Accordingly, when the beer is dispensed from the growler there is a loss of CO2 from within the growler and the beer which enables increasing the imbalance of carbonation of the beer and depletion of the freshness of the beer.
Attempts have been made to improve the preservation of liquid beverages contained in a vacuum sealed vessel. Many of these systems include couplers comprising separate components engaged to each other to facilitate operability and include couplers compatible with a specific liquid vessel, for example, a glass growler. More particularly, these couplers are restricted to implement a particular type of gas cartridge.
However, no solution is available in the art for providing a coupler implemented in a single body unit including a tap head, shank, cap, gas inlet, carbonation port, gas pressure gauge, gas pressure relief valve, gas pressure regulator, fluid delivery tube, adaptor, and faucet that can provide a system to accommodate a variety of pre-pressurized gas composition cartridges. Particularly, the problem of efficiently discriminating the gas composition content within the vessel is still unresolved. In addition, no solution is available in the art for providing a coupler that can be releasably attached to a variety of liquid vessels having a variety of neck finishes. In this context, it would be desirable to provide a coupler that can be implemented on a variety of liquid vessels and be operable to engage a variety of pressurized gas composition cartridges housing selective gas compositions including CO2, CO2 and N2; N2, and argon, and more particularly, with preferred gas compositions of 75% N2 and 25% CO2 which an embodiment of this disclosure herein provides.
All of the above hinders the liquid dispensing application of currently available couplers for maintaining the freshness of a liquid beverage. Therefore, there is a long felt need for a system that vacuum seals a coupler to a vessel for preserving and maintaining freshness of the fluid contents of the vessel by enabling maintaining pressurization within the vessel and enabling dispensing of the fluid contents externally from within the vessel without breaking the vacuum seal between the coupler and the vessel.